As they watched in horror Yearling inverted into an easy, gliding dive. Then he started to cartwheel and tumbled into the swirling clouds below.
He must have turned belly-to the shock wave, Ensign thought, shifting under the added weight of the new remoras. Accident? Or had he tried to shield Simon with his own body? They would never know.
In silence, they climbed to a safe altitude. Ensign wanted to start the song of mourning but the shock remained too fresh and too deep. The labor of carrying twice the normal compliment of remoras drained him to the inner core of his being. He longed for a quiet updraft filled with plankton.
“Killer was right,” Melody finally said forlornly. “There is no more Bach Choir.”
“We have the remoras with the songs,” Ensign protested weakly.
“More songs than we can ever learn,” she said sadly. “More remoras than we can keep or care for. Don’t you see?” her voices soared into the high registers in fury, “We’ve lost! We would have done better to keep the Choir together. If we’d died in skyfall we would have gone all at once. As it is we’ve died a little at a time and a little at a time, until now there’s nothing left!”
She turned away and fell silent, leaving Ensign grasping for something to say.
“Listen.” The Geek sang out.
With his damaged hearing Ensign had to deliberately shift through the registers to find it. There, down in the lower frequencies he found it.
Come, come, come
And then above it the higher frequencies.
Come ye weary travelers.
“Others made it!” Melody sang out.
“Maybe,” Ensign said. “Or maybe they were here all the time. We can join them.”
“High Folk to share our songs,” Melody trilled even higher in her excitement. For an instant she sounded like Crystal.
“And new songs!” The Geek chirped. “Songs we compose!” He hummed a phrase, tasting it.
“Ten traveled Northward when new stars shone in the sky…”
Yes, thought Ensign. New songs. Songs about their travels and who they had been. Of Teacher and Simon, of Shorty and brave bright Yearling. Of Droner and Crystal. Their songs, their hopes, their dreams, and all that had made up the Bach Choir.
That was the answer, he realized. The reason for everything they had gone through. The Bach Choir would live in those new songs. And they would be alive as long as the High Folk sang them. Meanwhile the tool songs would help others and perhaps the next time the sky fell, Simon’s songs of prediction would allow others to survive.
Melody had caught the mood too, humming tentative little rills based on The Geek’s musical doodling.
“We come. We come,” Ensign rasped out.
With a lift and swell of hydrogen, Ensign winged over and took the pod leader’s place. Still singing the response, The Geek and Melody fell in behind.
In loose formation the last of the Bach Choir and the first of a new choir, yet unnamed, turned east and glided across the cloud tops of Jupiter toward the rising Sun.